after a day of heated rhetoric that began on capitol hill, when boehner was blunt in again rejecting the president's demand for power to raise the country's debt ceiling. >> zero. congress is never going to give up our ability to control the purse. and the fact is, is that the debt limit ought to be used to bring fiscal sanity to washington, d.c. >> reporter: as the deadline to reach a deal to avert the fiscal cliff draws ever closer, republicans say the real issue is spending cuts. >> listen, republicans want to solve this problem by getting the spending line down. the president wants to pretend that spending isn't the problem. that's why we don't have an agreement. >> reporter: a claim the white house denies, spokesman jay carney. >> let's just be clear. there is one party to these negotiations who has put forward a specific proposal for revenue and a specific proposal for spending cuts. even when the republicans-- and i saw speaker boehner do this earlier today-- insist that the president hasn't put forward spending cuts, one, it begs the question, what spending cuts have the repu